What is Domain Authority?

What it is: Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking metric that allows us to measure the overall strength of any given website.

Why it matters: The score is given to predict how well a website will perform in Google's search engine results pages (SERPs).

So in simple terms, what is Domain Authority?

It's like a school report card for your website - the higher the score, the better your website is doing. It is a vital metric when trying to understand your website's status in relation to competitors, however, do not be confused, DA is NOT an official ranking factor.

How Is Domain Authority Calculated?

There are many factors that go into calculating a website domain authority. The exact formula for determining a DA score is not publicly known, but we've noticed several key factors that have impacted a website's score over time. We have listed them out below:

1. Number And Quality of Backlinks
2. Relevance And Content Of The Website
3. Social Signals
4. Traffic To The Website
5. Technical SEO

Number And Quality Of Backlinks

Arguably the most important factor when determining a DA score is the number and quality of backlinks, or inbound links.

This only makes sense because in Google's eyes, the more high quality links pointing to your site, the more authoritative your site must be.

Entire link profiles are taken into account when determining DA scores, including the linking root domains. (Tip: Google prioritizes the quality of the linking root domains over the quantity, more on this later).

Relevance And Content Of The Website

Your website must be publishing relevant, high quality content that your target audience will adore. The better you get at this, the higher your site's domain authority will be.

This is an essential piece of the pie when it comes to calculating the domain authority score. Needless to say, the more you research your niche, the higher your authority score will be.

Social Signals

Social signals are online interactions such as shares, likes and mentions. These signals indicate the popularity, relevance and engagement of a website's content, which can be a strong indicator of the website's value and relevance.

The more likes and shares a website receives, the more likely it is to be considered credible and trustworthy by both users and search engines.

Social signals are considered as a strong indicator of a website's popularity and relevance, and it plays an important role when calculating domain authority.

Traffic To The Website

A website with high volume organic traffic is considered highly authoritative in the eyes of search engines. This is because high traffic suggests that viewers of the website deem the site to be valuable and the content is seen as useful.

Search engines use the high traffic information to decipher that a website must be an authority in their respective domain, and due to this the domain authority scores are elevated.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO (search engine optimization) refers to all the behind-the-scenes, yet important features of a website. This includes elements such as load speed, mobile optimization, security and the website structure as a whole.

If your website is easy to navigate, loads quickly, and is optimized for mobile devices - it will evidently provide a better user experience, which is favored by search engines. Domain authority calculation takes all of this into account.

How Can I Check My Website's Domain Authority?

There are many tools on the internet that will allow you to check your site's DA, I have listed our personal top 3 below:

1. SEMRush Authority Score
2. MOZ Domain Authority
3. Ahrefs Domain Authority Checker

SEMRush Authority Score

SEMRush is a great SEO tool, and is one of the most frequently used SEO tools here at SavClicks. On top of its mountain of use cases, it is also able to provide you with any DA score you may want to check up on. Below you will find what is displayed in SEMRush:

MOZ Domain Authority

MOZ domain authority checker is another great way to check a websites DA. Simply type the domain you wish to check and press "analyze domain". The system will then show you the corresponding website's DA.

Ahrefs Domain Rating

Lastly, we have Ahrefs website authority checker. Yet another reliable source, Ahrefs does much more than just verify the DA score of a website. It's an all-round solid SEO tool, however it can also be used for simple DA verification.

What Is A Good Domain Authority Score?

In General, sites with high domain authority scores, such as Apple.com or Google.com, have a ton of high quality external links. These site's are typically in the 90s, and that score is practically unattainable for smaller businesses.

When you first launch your website, you are given a DA score of 0. Don't be discouraged, through hard work and some SEO strategy you can get your DA score to rise pretty quickly.

Now you may be wondering, what is a good domain authority score?

The truth is, there is none. DA is best used as a comparative metrics, when you are trying to see how you stack up next to competitors.

Due to this metric being relative, there are no good or bad DA scores. There are only good scores and bad scores when you compare them to your competition, and see how you stack up next to their DA scores.

It's a good idea to try and increase domain authority because comparing your website vs other websites and their search engine ranking score can give you some great insight on how you can begin tweaking your SEO strategies and rank higher in Google search results.

How Can I Increase My Domain Authority?

It's thought to be on a logarithmic scale, meaning it's harder to improve a score as you get higher, but since we all start at 0, it's fairly simple to rise from there.

It's proven that the best way to improve site authority is by improving your website's overall SEO status and focusing on high quality internal and external links. Let's dive deeper into how we can increase our DA.

1. Optimize On-Page SEO
2. Build High Quality Backlinks
3. Create High Quality, Shareable Content
4. Promote Your Content on Social Media

Optimize On-Page SEO

The single most important thing you can do to begin seeing an increase in your domain authority is to put an emphasis and optimize on-page SEO.

Here is a list of ways you can optimize your on-page SEO today:

• Use main keywords in the page title, meta description and in your content.
• Use header tags (H1, H2, H3) to structure the hierarchy of your content and make it easier for Google to understand the structure of your page.
• Use alt tags on images.
• Name your images with your keyword, compress them and shrink them to no larger than 1920px.
• Use internal links from different pages of your own website.
• Make sure your site is optimized for mobile and is user friendly.
• Improve website speed. You can view your website speed on Google page speed insights.
• External links, make sure to link to high quality relevant content that your readers will appreciate.

Build High Quality Backlinks

One of the most important factors of any great domain authority score is the number and quality of backlinks.

Backlinks, or inbound links, are gold in Google's eyes.

Google has stated in the past that it would be much more beneficial to focus your link building strategy around acquiring a few high quality inbound links, rather than a ton of subpar inbound links.

Building a solid link profile filled with high quality inbound links, from high authority sites, pointing towards your website is a surefire way to improve domain authority.

Another way of aquiring high quality backlinks is through guest posting, and utilizing all of the best guest blogging benefits.

Create High Quality, Shareable Content

Make sure that all the content you post on your website is high quality and relevant in your readers eyes.

This means creating original content, not AI based content.

There is no issue with AI providing you with some ideas, but when it comes to the actual juice of the content, be sure it is coming from first hand experience.

By creating a high quality piece of content, it will inevitably be shared more. More shares means more backlinks, and more backlinks from high authority websites will increase domain authority and allow you to rank higher.

Promote Your Content On Social Media

A wise content creator once said "devote twice as much time to promoting your content as you did to creating it."

By doing this, you'll ensure your content reaches maximum visibility and shares, thus increasing domain authority.

Not only will this help with your da score, but it will ensure some SEO success as well. Social media is a great way to build domain authority and help you raise your google rankings. You can also reach out to other bloggers and encourage them to share your content if you believe it will benefit their readers.

When your content is shared often enough, it can wind up on the laps of a website with high domain authority and if they provide your domain with a backlink, that means your domain authority will rise.

Why Did My Domain Authority Change?

Domain authority (DA) rankings are constantly evolving. Because the internet is constantly changing, a website's domain authority will never remain constant and will fluctuate over time.

There are many reasons as to why your domain rating may have changed, so we've listed a few different possibilities below:

• Your websites referring domains may have changed: A website's DA is influenced by the number and quality of external linking domains pointing to it. If a website acquires or loses many linking domains, its DA may change.
• Algorithm updates: DA's are calculated through algorithms, and algorithms have updates. Therefore if there was an update that occurred, this might signify that you will have some DA score changes.
• Website's content changes: If a website changes it's content, it can potentially affect it's DA score. This means that if you update your content regularly with high quality updates, you can expect an uptick in your DA score.
• Age of Domain: Older domains naturally have higher DA scores than newer domains, so as your website ages, so will your domain authority.
• Competitors: As your competitors begin ramping up their content and increasing their DAs, your site's domain authority may decrease in comparison.

Make sure you are constantly updating your content with high quality updates in order to remain on top of your niche.

Domain Authority VS Page Authority

By this point, you might be wondering what the difference is between domain authority and page authority might be. Allow us to explain, it's actually quite simple.

Domain Authority (Da) is a metric that predicts the strength of an entire website, whereas Page Authority (PA) is a metric that predicts the strength of a specific webpage.

We weren't lying when we said it was quite simple.

Conclusion

In conclusion, domain authority is a long term SEO strategy. It will take years to achieve the DA score you desire. Even though it is not a google ranking factor, and this metric alone will not bring you more organic traffic - it is a great metric that will allow you to see how you stack up against your competitors in any given niche.

Don't let your website get lost in Google - let us help boost your SEO and drive more traffic to your site today!

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